Longtime Conservation Leader to Direct Environment Focus Area for Walton Family Foundation
BENTONVILLE, ARK., May 28, 2014 - A longtime leader in environmental science and conservation who has worked for nearly three decades to preserve ecosystems across the globe has been selected to direct the environmental grant-making efforts of one of the country’s largest foundations.
The Walton Family Foundation has named Barry Gold, currently director of Marine Conservation at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to serve as director of the foundation’s Environment Focus Area. In this role, Gold will work with the Walton family, foundation staff and other partners to continue a vision for marine and freshwater conservation set by the foundation’s founders, Sam and Helen Walton.
“Barry Gold will be a great addition to the Walton Family Foundation team,” said Buddy Philpot, executive director of the Walton Family Foundation. “His deep scientific and policy expertise, together with his dedication to conservation solutions that strengthen both ecosystems and communities, make Barry the ideal person to lead our environmental initiatives.”
Since he joined the Moore Foundation in 2006, Gold has led efforts to keep the world’s ocean healthy through approaches that take both environmental and community needs into account. This includes work to shift fisheries management to an incentive-based system to help end overfishing, rebuild depleted stocks and sustain fishing communities, as well as efforts to advance comprehensive approaches to ocean planning.
Gold has dedicated his career to working at the intersection of environmental science and policy. Prior to joining Moore, he managed the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s work to protect and restore ecological systems. Before Packard, Gold was chief of the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center where he led an effort to restore the Colorado River ecosystem throughout the Grand Canyon. He has held senior positions with the National Biological Survey, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Gold has served as board president for the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, the leading affinity group for environmental foundations, and currently serves as vice-chair of the California Ocean Science Trust Board. See what environmental leaders are saying about Gold.
“Over the last seven years, Scott Burns built a strong program with talented staff. They and the Walton family have worked to align conservation and economic incentives to find effective solutions for some of our most pressing challenges in marine and freshwater systems,” said Gold. “I’m looking forward to building on that work, in collaboration with the Walton family, staff and dedicated grantees that are helping to conserve both these ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.”
Gold will begin his role as director of the foundation’s Environment Focus Area on June 30. Later this year, he will be responsible for working with the Walton family, foundation staff and other partners to create a strategic plan for an environment portfolio that includes grants totaling more than $90 million annually.
Daphne Moore, Communications Director
(479) 464-1578
dmoore@wffmail.com
About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation promotes environmental solutions that make economic sense for communities and their natural resources. The foundation works to achieve change that lasts by creating new and unexpected partnerships and bringing conservation, business and community interests to the same table to build long-term solutions to big problems. The foundation divides its environmental giving into two initiatives:
Freshwater Conservation, which works to sustain healthy and resilient communities of both people and wildlife in the Colorado River basin and along the Mississippi River from its headwaters to the delta; and
Marine Conservation, which supports initiatives that create economic incentives for sustainable resource management in some of the world’s most ecologically rich ocean areas, from Indonesia to Ecuador to the Gulf of Mexico.
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